


First Things First

by filia_noctis



Series: The Stuff Heroes are Made of [1]
Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault, Hindu Mythology
Genre: Alien Culture, Gen, India, Minor Canonical Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 15:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2856224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filia_noctis/pseuds/filia_noctis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Politics is an old word, but religion is older.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Things First

Hundreds of stories go around about Alexander, and each story can be made into at least three different tragedies. There are stories of the boy-king of Macedon (though he was more than a man really, at twenty, but people have trouble remembering that)who abandoned his homeland in favour of debts and armies and strange lands and strange folks, who believed himself a demi-god even if that never gets told, who was god knows what sort of a king, given how he left all the lands and folks he managed a submission from the moment the submission was wrought in favour of other hands, capable hands may be (who can be very sure?) but never his own hands, not for long, who was gloriously gracious and generous to lovers-friends, friends-lovers, friends, lovers, and all (the rest?) of whom he brought to heal. They say he named cities after himself and his pets, numerously. Same names over, and over, and over again, but was not short of imagination. His imagination of himself probably made him look like a visionary to others. He set out to be remembered, and remembered he was, is, for etching his way indelibly through the strange grounds he walked on. Remembered enough for the marks and chafe marks and scars his etchings would leave. But somehow, still, remembered more as the dream of the boy-adventurer, the military strategist, the eternal charmer-goldenhead-lover-demigod-you-can’t-refuse (I know the type, though those here have dark hair and liquid eyes). He was curious to see the actual marks of his geography lessons, they say. He was a globe-trotter (not ambitious bastard? All heroes are made of that stuff, in all myths, and he had his own to model himself after) who happened to be able to manage a standing army. What if he couldn’t? What if he could only walk the world a pilgrim so the new grounds he tread wouldn’t be obliged to remember his presence once he tread them? This is after all, no Mauryan emperor stretching his greedy, but somewhat familiar, _understandably covetous_ hands to Kalinga. Did he have good enough translators? Did the number of the kill in his wake bother him? Did the brilliant military strategy that looks like it won over kingship manage to eclipse gnawing doubts about at least some (if not all) of the peoples skewered and altered indelibly in the sudden unprovoked march of his army over them to sate his attempts at divinity, at immortality, at what his people thought courage, may be, at self-styled demi-godhood, at vanity, at a geography lesson that was too much a success? They say he chopped a rope to solve a knot. The knot got unknotted, but I am sure the rope couldn’t be used again. Perhaps they had enough ropes to spare. Wouldn’t it be glorious to own a yard of one that can withhold unknotting for a thousand years though! He got what he wanted, one supposes, he got to be the stuff stories are made of. He didn’t travel for defence or exile or because his homeland had gone to waste, he had the daring to travel for pleasure. With an army. And he was indulged enough by all he was beloved by to think he could transcend the logic of greed, even when what he probably coveted was divinity and fame more than drachmas or mudras or talents or cattle or land or harvest. Were they incidental enough for him that he assumed them to be incidental for every people he passed? I suppose he had to. See, stuff like that makes me see—not red, no—but black sails and skulls. The last time somebody decided they thought that way around here, we had a Kurukshetra (we love, but don’t necessarily trust tricksters, faux tricksters, and their charms). Stuff like that stays remembered. The only think I know is that thank god thank god he can’t live with the version where he is an unthinking tyrant even if being an unthinking invader isn’t a problem, and when his soldiers pleaded to stop and about turn, he let them, and that is how, out of pure chance, and never a good one at that, he managed to not enter the memory of my people to leave another indelible etching (and possible scud marks) there. I know my people, they would play you by the rules of the game played here, even the great great great, much greater grandmothers and grandfathers, and would suffer a skirmish or a suicide at the end of it in favour of cowardice, or submission, or death, or rape. That is how honour is spelt out for them, you see, and strange Macedonian honour codes don’t roll out easily on the tongue. But Alexander saw the world he wanted to see, how he wanted to see it, and the world saw him back and wasn’t allowed to forget him. He is the stuff heroes, and stories are made of. And hundreds of stories go around about Alexander, and each story can be made into at least three different tragedies.

Nobody knows the name of Kalanos. Strange sentence that, innit?

They say Greek tragedies can have happy endings, not just the kind where the suffering and enduring royalty get to go to heaven and set camp by the gods (that is the general refrain here) but the kind where everybody settles down for a happily ever after on earth. People make the tragedies, not the stories. I like our gods better though. They don’t sound like they are little evil, cruel children who hide the walking sticks of their blind grandparents and laugh cherubically around them while they hobble. We do have our Tricksters, make no mistake, but they make love to you something famous.

 

Anybody will tell you this is an old land. A plural land. No surprises there, really. What is important is that it is a land with memories and flavours and it remembers it all—every bit of it, all the differences that it will not lock in a Pandora’s box to turn into what they will later call Schrodinger’s cats, but make bonfires of, stretching out and shrivelling up and being unsubtle enough to claw at you only at its rocky edges, and never too much, never nothing you can’t take. It salts and pickles you in its heat and muddles you with the smell of wet wild grass after sharp showers and ranks you with sweat and drags you down with baked sand and dirty snow when it wills, in the parts of it it wills and you let it plough you down and husk you out and knead you and you stay grateful, and you find joy, and sorrow, and heartache. And you get drunk on stories, for it has so very many to drug you with, and before you know it, you are an addict forever bound. They ask me to imagine it as a woman and I can’t. They try calling it a man and they choke. I think this land, my land, is Shikhandi if it _has_ to be made flesh, reduced to form: anthropomorphized.  I can’t always see the need. It doesn’t need a face to have a touch. Or a voice.

And here, the stories that match your tragedies look same, but run different. Here you don’t aspire to, believe yourself worthy of, or imagine yourself god-touched and act. Here you act, and eventually, if a god touches you, there isn’t much scope for obscure speculation.


End file.
